One former intelligence official told The Daily Beast that career officials in ODNI were “blindsided” by the announcement. Two other senior Trump officials said the news of Grenell’s appointment moved its way through the halls of the White House over the last few days…

Grenell does not have any direct experience in the intelligence field—a fact that triggered alarm bells for some.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, was blunt in his reaction to the appointment: “The President has selected an individual without any intelligence experience to serve as the leader of the nation’s intelligence community in an acting capacity. This is the second acting director the President has named to the role since the resignation of Dan Coats, apparently in an effort to sidestep the Senate’s constitutional authority to advise and consent on such critical national security positions, and flouting the clear intent of Congress when it established the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in 2004,” he said in a statement.